Posted
by
samzenpus
on Tuesday April 17, 2012 @07:51AM
from the plug-in-the-chair dept.

MrSeb writes "If you long for those balmy days when TVs looked like pieces of furniture, good news: This fall, IKEA will release Uppleva, a range of home entertainment systems that integrate a flat-screen full HD TV, 2.1 sound, and a Blu-ray player. Uppleva will come in three different designs, with a range of screen sizes starting at 24 inches. If the built-in Blu-ray player isn't enough, there are two USB and four HDMI ports down the side of the screen, and an empty 'bay' that can hold a games console, TiVo, or another set-top box of your choice. In true IKEA fashion, the whole caboodle will come in a range of colors (white, light wood, dark wood, black, and so on). Prices start at 6,500 Swedish Kroner (around $950) — presumably for the 24-inch version — which is a fairly good deal. Uppleva will only be available in a few European markets to start with, but the UK and North America should see it in early 2013."

And? Not the whole world revolves around your navel, there's plenty of people who would be absolutely delightled to get one of these. Without even properly thinking about it I could name a handful of households where I fully expect to see something similar soo. You see, the thing is that for many people the aesthetics is more important than getting the most technically sound solution, "good enough" is plenty when it's made pretty.

Not to be combative, but generally speaking things like this are miserable failures. You get a bad fridge AND a bad tv, regardless if it's pretty or not. Thus, the first guy's post isn't as self-centered as you've indicated. I too lament the loss of "component" technology in favor of all-in-ones (my home stereo, for example...) but understand some all-in-one things have become so cheap, they are easier to just replace the entire thing than it is to maintain multiple parts (iMac vs. Mac Pro, for another example).

Have you actually owned IKEA furniture? I've had a set of shelves from there that have lasted me at least 6 years and two moves. They may have a lot of particle board furniture but it is well made for the materials involved.

My wife and I have purchased several piece of furniture from IKEA and we're very pleased. Sure, they're not made from top notch materials, but how long are you going to own a couch? They're out of style in 6 or 7 years. And, frankly, I'm quite impressed with the construction of their furniture -- very sturdy and comfortable. We bought a couch, oversized chair and a book case from IKEA. We're pleased with all three. Would I buy their furniture for our family room, that gets used every single night, from IKEA

Have you actually owned REAL furniture?While writing this from the comfort of my great-grandfather's riveted leather couch, I can't help but think that my hardwood cupboard used to belong to my great-great-grandfather. 6 years? It must be at least 20 times older than that.I don't expect to have to buy new furniture, at all, ever.

Have you actually owned REAL furniture?
While writing this from the comfort of my great-grandfather's riveted leather couch, I can't help but think that my hardwood cupboard used to belong to my great-great-grandfather. 6 years? It must be at least 20 times older than that.
I don't expect to have to buy new furniture, at all, ever.

Indeed, as Alan Clark quoted regarding Michael Heseltine "the trouble with Michael is that he had to buy his own furniture".

Similarly, some of us live in houses that are less than five hundred years old, and cannot afford even the bare minimum number of servants for a gentleman (three).

Not *everyone* perhaps, but you might be surprised at the cost. "Real" furniture is more expensive than Ikea stuff, but it doesn't have to be that much more expensive. Recently I looked at getting book shelves for the living room; I budgeted for the high end Ikea bookcases (which look pretty good), but as it turns out I can get some "proper" ones for a bit more, and even quality custom-built bookshelves at twice the cost. Expensive, but certainly not out of reach.

It really depends on exactly what you buy. I've seen things from IKEA that last 10 years, and I've seen things that fall apart in 2. Part of the problem is self-assembly. Something that isn't put together properly or with the screws a little too loose or too tight is going to have problems in the long term. Also, since when is 6 years a long time for something to last? People used to buy real wood furniture and pass it down through the generations. We currently have a table in our kitchen that my wife had

I second this. Not all particle board is identical. Three bedroom sets, numerous shelves, kid furniture, etc... has all lasted at least 5+ years and a couple moves. And there's no indication that they wouldn't last another 10. The stuff I've bought at the local big box office supply store is FAR worse quality than IKEA. I had a shelf that sagged when I put anything heavier than empty DVD cases on it. Meanwhile, I've got heavy books on an IKEA shelf that have been there 10 years, and it's still "straight as

I was a great fan of Ikea (sofa, bed, wardrobe, shelves) until I went there last time to get some more Ivar (modular pine) shelves. They've now decided to make the shelves with seriously ugly plastic fittings at the end, instead of the discrete fittings they previously had.

Their reasoning is apparently to keep costs down, however they're going to start losing customers as they make everything cheaper & cheaper. I've got a bit of disposable income and I'm willing to spend a little more on something if I

I would have to disagree. In my experience, it's the opposite. About 5% is poorly built. My advice, don't buy the cheap stuff. Ikea has a lot of it on display, but it doesn't make a large proportion of the assortment.I furnished a whole apartment from IKEA and 7 years on and 3rd renter (yes, I rent it) and it's still fine. The Kitchen, the closets, the chairs. Honestly, just because you have to put it together it gets a bad rep. I used to collect money to get IKEA stuff. When I finally got it, putting it together was something my wife and I REALLY looked forward to. It was like playing Legos all over again. And my wife likes it! It's genius. They're the Apple of furniture. Complain all you want about your pet insignificant peeve about it, but it sells like hotcakes and the customers absolutely love it.

I furnished a whole apartment from IKEA and 7 years on and 3rd renter (yes, I rent it) and it's still fine.

Pardon my skepticism, but our landlord says the same thing about our fridge that won't cool below 45, toilet that won't flush straight water without the assistance of a plunger, and the vinyl tiles that mysteriously came unglued 3 days after we moved in. I'll be surprised if any of those things will be "still fine" when it's time to get our deposit back though.

This is a luxury apartment. Fully furnished. It's 45m square, so it's small, but it has over 20 light fixtures in the living room and 50+ in the bedroom (there are dimmable LED stars in the ceiling). The entertainment centers are built into the walls and you could only guess where the fridge is if given pictures. It's in good shape. Between tenants I prefer to invite my friends to the party pad instead of my house, because its NICER. My tenants were: a corporate real estate buff, who left a full bottle of R

Being an Ikea man myself, I completely agree with your post, but just that sentence needs a bit tuning. They have Apple-like quality, but instead of making expensive elite products, their target is to bring quality wares for everyone. I don't actually know if there is a computer-world analogy?

The low end Ikea furniture is squarely aimed at students and people who are just moving into their first unfurnished home. It is intended to be a cost effective way of furnishing a room or house cheaply. This allows people to furnish their house quickly and cheaply.

This is only one part of their offering though. Their mid and high end furniture is very well designed and hard wearing. It is almost all solid wood rather than MDF or particle board and certainly rivals much more expensive furniture offered else

To be fair, I've found that the quality of IKEA furniture is directly proportional to the price. The cheaper IKEA stuff is just euro-styled Wal-mart tier particleboard crap, but their higher-end stuff is comparable in quality to most good furniture out there...

At least, that's been my experience among friends and family that shop there. I don't have much IKEA stuff myself just because I prefer antiques and more traditional styles of furniture...

This is IKEA furniture we're talking about. Which means that it's both inexpensive and the quality is reasonable for the price.

They're furniture certainly isn't something that you pass down through the generations, but it will probably last a few years. Which is unlike the cheap chipboard furniture you find in many department stores. It fits the budgets of many people. You can't say that for quality furniture, which will probably cost as much to move as many IKEA pieces cost to buy. And the designs are

If I want a cell phone, I'll buy a cell phone. If I want an MP3 player, I'll buy an MP3 player. If I want a PDA I'll buy a PDA

The deal here is simple, sometimes putting stuff together is a tremendous boon, sometimes not. Sometimes it depends on how well it's done. Ikea's version may stink like all the rest has, but then again it may suceed where others have failed.

IKEA sells boxes that are big enough to be an addition to your home, condo or apartment. First you expand your living space with an IKEA box and then you fill it with the stuff that came in the IKEA box;-)

Typical consumer preference is really driven by their environment, i.e., how big are their homes. Americans hate multifunction devices. The only really successful one is the clock radio. If we want more stuff we just build homes with more rooms to house it, even if it does not make our life better [ted.com]. Europe has smaller homes so they are more receptive. After all, its called the Swiss army knife, not the Bowie knife. Asia has the smallest homes so you see the greatest acceptance of multifunction devices

There is nothing about this thing that makes it any more suitable for your average apartment dweller in SFO or NYC. It's little more than a standard TV stand and TV. Except it isn't modular and it looks like a cheap piece of crap that came from IKEA.

There are better ways to solve the "problem" from the ad video accompanying this product.

I don't think I would go for a TV based on the fact that it matches the furniture, I choose the TV I want and then find furniture that I want to match it. I think most nerds would be the same. Chalk it off as do not want for me

I meant match as in will this TV fit into this shelving unit thing. Personally so long as it stores things neatly and isn't pink and covered in yellow polka dots its will do. I take functionality over aesthetics most days. No point in having an awesome TV if you have to put it sideways on whatever unit to make it fit but also no point in having an awesome TV if the unit that its on is going to be more distracting than the TV itself

I think it kind of depends on whether you've reached a point with the electronics where you can kind of buy whatever and trust that it's "good enough". Like I don't go around spending lots of time shopping out light bulbs. I'm not an audiophile, so as long as speakers don't totally stink, I'd probably be fine with them being built into the walls or into furniture. The main reason I wouldn't want a TV built into my furniture is really because TV designs are still in such flux, and there will probably be s

Just last week my wife stopped and got a Blu-ray disc from RedBox, after about a year of using only Netflix streaming, etc. About a minute into the movie we were both wondering how we ever go so lazy that it was worth giving up the quality of Blu-ray just so we didn't have to go get a disc.

It's a false choice forced on us by the telcos and cable companies. Netflix could, and did, offer hi-def streaming content - until Comcast and the others slammed down bandwidth caps, for the unspoken but obvious purpose of destroying first Netflix's video and audio quality, and secondly to destroy Netflix outright by slowly ratcheting down the caps while making their own offerings cap-free.Netflix could offer Blu-ray quality. iTunes already nearly does. We've been screwed by the pipe owners. As I said 12 ye

I think it kind of depends on whether you've reached a point with the electronics where you can kind of buy whatever and trust that it's "good enough". Like I don't go around spending lots of time shopping out light bulbs. I'm not an audiophile, so as long as speakers don't totally stink, I'd probably be fine with them being built into the walls or into furniture. The main reason I wouldn't want a TV built into my furniture is really because TV designs are still in such flux, and there will probably be some

I choose the TV I want and then find furniture that I want to match it.

If that TV is a good one and you start looking for furniture that goes with it, you will end up with Ikea. (At least that is what they hope.)I can imagine that they will price it very low, so people will come in for the TV and leave with new furniture as well.

I like the idea, as I look first at the furniture and then look at what TV I can match with it. The choice of screens I can buy is so vast that that is a much easier choice. My choi

But if you can accessorize, then you don't have to make your initial decision based on color limitations. I guess(?) people are shallow enough to buy a phone based on the accessory colors that are available, but I'm just going to guess people aren't buying iPhones because you can get a Pink Camo Hello Kitty cover for it, rather, they are buying it for more substantial reasons, like emoji in text...

the video doesn't say that it's battery powered? only the poorly written article does.

a stroke of genius?? feck no. they're selling a tv stand and a tv at the same time, that's just about it. the tv being pretty much slapped on top of the furniture. 24" from a shop leaves you a bunch of money to buy a ps3 and a full soundsystem and some ikea stuff to put it on..

What is Blu-Ray again? Isn't that the technology that a very small minority of people used for a very short period of time to bridge the gap during the transition from DVDs to online delivery?

But seriously, what is it with companies coming to the party late and/or clinging to dead/dying technology. Are their processes so inefficient that by the time they produce something, it's already out of date?

Blu-ray is still only about 1/4 the market of plastic coasters containing commercials and occasionally movies. DVD is still 75% (by sales). The blu-ray player does both. Online delivery is starting to break through mainstream, but isn't really firmly out of the *geek* sector yet... Especially in Europe (ikea's main market) where netflix is a joke, and bandwidth is sold by the gigabyte.

But still, even in Europe, the writing must be on the wall. It was becoming inevitable in England even though I moved from there back in 2007. Not to diminish the importance of the rest of Western Europe, but I'm not sure too many global companies can bank their success on technology that will be out of date by the time they get to market.

Plus, all we ever hear about is how the rest of the world has such better bandwidth/service than the US, but pretty much everywhere I've been in the US has streaming servi

there will always be the crazy old cat lady with her collection of Disney VHS tapes...

I may not be a crazy old cat lady, but I do own a cat* and have a VCR I use to record that oddball show. I still like to go to Ikea (though the two closest are 1.5 hours away from me [different directions]) and did buy a fantastic tv stand from them over a decade ago which weighs a ton and has no issues holding up my 36" tube tv.

* As I tell people, my cat is better behaved and listens better than a vast majorit

Bandwidth sold by the gigabyte? I thought that was the US with all these stories on slashdot about monthly caps while at the same time streaming is becoming bigger and bigger. I've had different ISP's in the Netherlands and Finland and have never heard of such a thing. It's mostly fair use as far as I know, but I haven't heard stories of any problems with that, either.

Netflix: yes, it's in the UK now, isn't it? That's about it. And there are no good alternatives, either. So in that sense, Europe sucks, inde

Because last I checked, Netflix isn't available on pretty much every device on the planet. In my house alone, Netflix is built-in to: AppleTV, Roku, Samsung Blu-ray player (yeah, yeah, I know, I ripped on blu-ray only to admit I have a blu-ray player, but that's how I realized how stupid blu-ray is, after all), all my computers, all my phones, my iPad and my 52" tv.

The only merit to your argument I see is if you want to own the media long term. Most people don't care to, but most people aren't geeks on sla

The only merit to your argument I see is if you want to own the media long term.

No, that's one argument against building a Netflix-compatible device. Another argument is that it is illegal (and well as difficult thanks to trade secrets) to create a Netflix implementation without permission. Type "apt-get source netflix" sometimes and watch it not happen.

You say there are multiple Netflix implementations. I say there is one, because all apparently-different implementations are controlled by one party.

Blu-Ray is the medium the anti-business studios use for delivering source material to the release groups. It's consumer-hostile enough to not be suitable for common everyday people, but easy enough to crack to be suitable for the release groups. The release groups then prepare the easy-to-use files for their sooper-sekrit channels and from there it goes to bittorrent for everyone.

Prices start at 6,500 Swedish Kroner (around $950) â" presumably for the 24-inch version â" which is a fairly good deal.

But uh, is it? You get some shitty furniture and probably a mediocre TV and certainly a mediocre Blu-Ray player for $950. A 24" TV is somewhere from $150 to $400, let's call it $200 because it will probably not be very good. A Blu-Ray player is maybe $100 itself. Is a crappy piece of IKEA furniture which has space for only one games console worth $750? MY SOURCES SAY NO.

When I was 15 the best TV you could get was a cylindrical Trinitron. All the other TVs sucked compared to it. Do you think most of my friend's parents bought Trinitrons?

We was po and we had a Trinitron, which proves equally as little as your comment about... what, exactly? If you have a point to make, then please do so. You've only started a comment, I'm waiting for the end.

Sony used to have a TV stand that had a built-in entertainment system (speakers, subwoofer, receiever, DVD player - this was before BluRay) back when I sold electronics in the mid 2000s. No one bought the thing because it was overpriced and what happens when something breaks? You have to take the whole damn thing in to get something fixed.

But, this is IKEA, so it probably comes in 1500 pieces and uses cartoon drawings of people putting it together that you'll want to slash in the throat before you get don

Yet another ad? This time we're even given prices and the colors it comes in. Is this the home shopping channel for nerds? There is nothing innovative or interesting about gimmick furniture with run-of-the-mill consumer electronics embedded in it. This isn't Google Glasses or a 3-D printer.

The editors may again protest that they didn't intend it as an ad. Either that's disingenuous or they are blind to what any reader can see. I wish they would put as much effort into finding great content as into spamming

1) To lure people who don't really like furniture shopping into a furniture store (because you can go look at tech stuff like LCD TVs, BluRay players and the like now, while your wife shops for lawnchairs, table cloths and garden pottery) 2) To give people who are easily confused by detailed electronics specs (e.g. choosing from 40 different LCD TVs in a big electronics store) a simple option of buying one, pre-selected TV/BluRay/Cabinet combo. You pay-once, transport-once with this deal, instead of getting

The IKEA I know would simply sell a VESA (or maybe own IKEA standard) TV fixing that can be mounted perfectly to 90% of other IKEA furniture, some adhesive cable holders and offer a range of TVs. And OF COURSE you have to assemble it yourself!

But for your grandma who still has the 1980's console CRT authentic wood television/coffee table... this is for her. Or my parents, who watch TV once a week who are still using the TV my sister left behind when she left for grad school. This is for them.

The thing is a massive piece of furniture holding - what? Some tiny amount of electronics?

Even DVD and Blu-Ray players are bloated boxes. After all, they're basically PC drives with an additional interface board. Packaging a player in a box about 6x6x2" [alarmcaraudio.gr] is quite possible. But most players have about 4x as much interior volume as they need.

it only has to last until the next move. with people moving houses every 10 years or less on average ikea is a pretty good deal for the price they charge. why buy some expensive furniture that will be scratched up by the movers? and with kids everywhere ikea is awesome for the evil minions of hell that jump on furniture

If you're going that route why not just shop craigslist etc? There's a staggering amount of furniture out there that people don't want. I don't propose everyone do what we did and buy a $125 leather couch set and refurb it, but there's plenty of genuinely nice stuff out there of better quality than Krapea.

It's actually cheaper to rent a pickup and buy something quality used than it is to buy some complete shit from IKEA that didn't even need to be made in the first place because there's so much used furniture lying around.

Also, you can rent big vans from Home Depot for about $25 for an hour or 2. Lots of space in there. They generally like if you buy something from them first, but I've known people who bought something big just to rent the van, go pick up what they actually needed, and then return the van and the large item at the same time. Also, truck rental places will give you a deal in the middle of the month when they aren't renting out many trucks. Just tell them you only need it for a couple hours. The trucks just

I've found everything they have in the sub 40 euro category to have been pretty good value for money.

I wouldn't recommend shelling 400 euros+ for them for any item though. though I think one can furnish their home with just the sub 40 euro stuff from ikea and bauhaus pretty nicely. I'm not much into antiques or heavy wood stuff that I'd need to care for.

Interestingly, I find IKEA's furniture reasonnably durable. They are definitely not the best quality, but they are reasonnably cheap, they will still last years and they are often in a simple but modern style.

I have a computer desk that I bought from them about 7 years ago. It cost about $40. I don't know what it is made of, some sort of honeycomb construction I imagine, because it is very light. Anyway, after 7 years of holding up a 17 inch CRT it has not sagged at all. I have no complaints at all about their furniture.

If you want cheap furniture there's no better place to go. They actually put thought into how the furniture is constructed and try to make the best of the materials they use. This is a far cry from other bargain furniture, like the junk you might find at Walmart.

This doesn't mean, however, that it makes sense to buy everything from Ikea. I would never buy certain items from Ikea I expect to use extensively. Sofas come to mind and office desks. But it really depends on the item, because Ikea does offer certa

I must admit though, IKEA is a cool store to visit, if I want to earn browny points with the wife. She could spend days in there if they let her.

They just opened a new store in my area... well, they replaced the existing one.

Quite frankly, the place terrifies me. As you drive by it, it's enormous. It dwarfs the mall and restaurants near it, has something like 4 levels of parking. They went from 113,000 square feet to 427,000 square feet.